


Trust (no one)

by Moonstruckidiot



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: AU, Angst, Betrayal, Love, M/M, One Shot, Young Armitage Hux, Young Ben Solo, adult armitage hux, adult ben solo, armitage hux loves ben solo, different first meeting, short fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 23:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12994734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonstruckidiot/pseuds/Moonstruckidiot
Summary: General Hux has to trust someone with his most precious thing, that someone is a former princess turned General





	Trust (no one)

**Author's Note:**

> No beta, forgive me my mistakes...please :-)

As much as leaders may deny it in times of war and peace there are always communication channels open between enemies. It is a matter of knowing people who know people who know other people and so on. As a General in the First Order Armitage Hux knows exactly whose ear to whisper in. That is how he and, as unlikely as it may seem, Leia Organa come to be sitting across the table from each other. They are not just in the back of beyond but somewhere so far, far beyond that they are almost at the beginning, if that sort of thinking makes sense.

They stare at each other, contempt chilling the very air between them, neither wanting to be the first to blink, to show any weakness this early on.

Organa is small, it was the first thing Hux noted. She is well known for being petite but her legend makes her seem much taller, by all rights she should be as tall if not taller than her son. Her son. The man who killed her worthless outlaw of a husband. The man whom this is all about.

“Did you ever forgive him, your husband, for losing your son.” And there it is what Hux had been hoping for, that little shift in eye contact, that little trace of guilt. He doesn’t smile in triumph at least not on the outside and like any good General when he senses weakness he presses forward. “No, I suppose not. How old would he have been, ten I think. Yes that would be correct. He was ten when he was recruited.”

“Kidnapped.” Hux smiles at Leia or at least raises his lips in what could be assumed to be a smile.

“You say kidnapped I say recruited but we are not here to play semantics now are we. I have brought your son back to you, twenty years later but better late than never.”

When Hux had first reached out he hadn’t been sure if Leia would want to see her son. Even if she did agree to meet he couldn’t be certain she wouldn’t just see it as an opportunity to capture two prominent enemies of the resistance. His choices though were very limited so he hoped, and gods if that is something he doesn’t like to do, she still had some maternal feelings despite what Kylo had become. After all it wasn’t entirely Kylo’s fault, blame could easily be placed with Leia, and Hux himself not that he feels any guilt about that, not at all.

So it is not without some relief for Hux that Leia’s eyes warm just a fraction at the mention of a reunion with her son. From the folds of his great coat Hux takes out a datapad and slides it across the table, Leia’s eyes drop down, her fingers run across the screen and she flinches. A mother’s love, thinks Hux, such a splendid thing, or so he’s been told.

“Ah, he’s in a pretty bad way, alive but only just and the medics taking care of him are, how can I put this, not the most skilled. I couldn’t very well take him to a First Order facility not if you are to retrieve him without incident. I’ll give you his location and wait here whilst you send someone to get him.”

Leia looks up directly into Hux’s eyes, _why._ She doesn’t ask but puzzlement is writ in the tilt of her head and the lines of her frown.

“It’s not a trap,” he assures her although he can tell she isn’t convinced and he wouldn’t be either in her position.  “I assume who ever you send is loyal to you and wont spirit him off.”

“Yes, they can be trusted,” replies Leia.

“Good. Your son needs you,” he says settling back in his chair, crossing his legs getting comfortable. “You’ll be wondering how you're going to convince your people not to kill him.” 

It’s a blatant piece of emotional manipulation and Hux is sure Leia can tell, but it is the truth.

“It is a concern,” she replies. Hux marvels at how alike yet unalike she is to her son. Sat across from her enemy Leia is calm and self contained so unlike Kylo and so much more like Hux himself. There is passion and power too, it emanates off her but she does not wrap it around herself in the same ridiculously vainglorious yet endearingly uncertain way Kylo does. He wonders how she would have fared if it had been her to fall into the hands of Snoke all those years ago. Would she hold her power with the same benign and self assured air she does now, unlikely. Such thoughts though are useless and take up precious time so he turns back to the subject at hand, keeping Kylo alive.

Hux indicates to the droid stood by Leia’s right shoulder, “Get your droid to record this. It’s a story it might help and it might not but that’s up to you.”

His eyes wander up to the ceiling, it has been a long time since he has thought about this, he sighs and begins.

“I remember the day, Ben as he was then, was brought into the academy.”

Hux allows an image to play out in his mind. The sound of his shoes meeting the polished floor, he’s on his way to somewhere, but where is not important. His head jerks at something out of place, a scream. It's not pain that he’s hearing, he’s heard enough sounds of pain in his short life to know the difference, it is outrage. Hux dares to stop and peek around a corner and there is a boy several years younger than himself.

“He was like an energy bolt, Gods did he wake us all up. I’d never heard such an uncontrolled racket,” a chuckle escapes him and he feels warmth at the memory.

He turns to Leia, “He’s still the same all these years later.”

She smiles just a little, memories of her own alight in her mind.

“You have to understand that cadets came in to the academy one of two ways, charged up with purpose and belief or scared but resigned but they were always, always quiet. Not your Ben though. As small as he was he knew some obscenities. I assume he picked them up from Han.”

It is completely unnecessary but he couldn’t resist just a little dig and his reward is a sharp little stare.  In the back of his mind Hux thinks that perhaps maybe one day he could admire her.

“I learned later that he was found on a smuggler planet and some officers thought he had potential, that’s how he ended up at the academy and not the trooper programme.” He pauses uncrosses his legs and looks directly at the droid.

“No one knew about his magic tricks, he kept that hidden. He learned to wear a mask very young.” Hux takes a breath in and returns his gaze to the ceiling, “he was very clever your boy but he trusted the wrong person.”

“You,” the word is bitten out, a flare of anger but as far as Hux is concerned she has no right to be.

“Yes,” Hux replies, “me. But I didn’t lose him or entrust him to someone blatantly not up to the job.”

They both seethe internally and then, almost in unison, calm. Hux isn’t sure why he felt the need to defend himself. He doesn’t feel guilty about what he did, not at all.

“Eventually I think he decided his best course of action was to play along, be a good little cadet and he was. But he wanted to go back to you and his father, he tried to run in those first few months but they always found him.”

Hux drums his fingers on the table and frowns. “We became friends, the useless paper thin boy and the troublesome little ball of chaos. He’d tell me about the places he’d been and the adventures he’d had with his father and I’d give him pointers on how to stand to attention and that sort of thing. It may not seem much but it helped him survive, it helped us both survive.”

His fingers, Hux realises, are still drumming away. Leia looks at them and Hux cant help but feel betrayed by his own appendages.

“Friendships,” he continues after stilling his fingers. “Weren’t encouraged at the academy. We could seek out mutually beneficial alliances but emotional attachments, no. Our mission to bring order to the galaxy was ... is, is much more important than something as fragile as attachments.”

“When did you fall in love with my son?” Hux feels like Leia has stabbed him in the gut. His fingers clench tight and his knuckles whiten at hearing that offensive word. Love, ugh, a sign of his own failings, his weakness the thing he’d tried to eliminate all those years ago.

He grits his teeth and almost spits the words at her, “The first time I saw him.” He can see pity in the softening of her eyes and he does not want nor need it.

“I cant remember how I learned about his force, I think he just showed me one day.”

It is a lie because he does know, it is one of his most precious memories something only he and Kylo should share. The two of them had snuck out to the furthest perimeter they could safely go without triggering the alarm, he remembers soft laughter and even softer lips, also hands. Hands that didn’t know quite what to do but took his breath away all the same. Then there was the light, light that shouldn’t have been there in the dark of the woods on that moonless night. Ben had grinned as he’d confessed to possessing magic and to demonstrate he levitated Hux or at least tried. With awe Hux had watched as he was lifted a foot off the ground. It had not been as grand a gesture as Ben would have liked and he had been determined to do better. His fourth attempt had only been stopped by Hux pushing him up against a tree and kissing him. They walked hand in hand back to their dorms, when they parted ways Hux promised not to tell anyone of Ben’s secret and he had meant it, at least in that moment.

“As a child the only thing I ever wanted was to bring order to chaos.”

He had believed, still believed, he would be saving the people from themselves, it was honourable, like a knight of old and it had seemed much more realistic than obtaining the love of his father.

“How could I do that if I was weak, vulnerable, if I was attached.”

His eyes have fallen down to the table, they stare at his hands which have once again started drumming.

“So I told them about Ben, I tricked him into revealing himself and _he_ came for him.”

A memory of a being dressed in black, his face obscured, presses in on Hux. He can still feel his own fear and relief as Lord Ren thanked him and left. He stops the memory there not wanting to relive the last moments of Ben Solo.

He takes a long breath in and then out, tension flows away. It surprises him but he does feel better for confessing.

“You’ll be pleased to know that when he next saw me he tried to kill me. One of Snoke’s little games. I only knew he was Kylo Ren, the master of the knights of Ren and my co-commander, not who he had formerly been. He knew me though.” Hux smiles, he can’t help himself, even he feels like he got what he deserved. “Thank the gods for Stormtroopers and Bacta Tanks.”

“My point is that Ben never wanted any of this but you tell me what grown man, never mind 13 year old boy, could survive something as powerful as Snoke. Ben would have fought because that what he does but he was subject to the whims of Snoke for half his life and who knows what he did to him.” Hux takes a breath in before his final appeal. “But I have seen Ben Solo’s smile on Kylo Ren’s face, he is still there and now Leia it’s up to you.”

 

Leia looks at Hux, she can feel compassion for the boy who cut his heart out because he was taught it made him weak but not the man sitting before her. She would like to kill him herself, this man who blew up a star system but she wont jeopardise her son, not anymore than she already has.

“Snoke is dead, I assume Ben killed him.”

Hux nods. “There is a power vacumn now and I intend to fill it.”

“And you are leaving your heart with me for safe keeping.”

And there is that spiteful little smile, Leia wishes she could slap it off his face.

“I couldn’t think of anyone better.”

Having nothing more to say Hux gets up from his chair and heads for the door.

“I wont let you have him back,” Leia calls out just as he exits.

He doesn’t look back.

.........

Leia is sat at her desk back at base when a message comes through, it’s sent to her private channel.

It reads, _Just try and stop me - H_


End file.
